I have used the heat mapping and have seen different results depending on bone placement. But in general nothing horrible. Normal editing as expected for this kind of thing that I have used in other packages. What are you getting?

Oh, OK. In that case I can't confirm the same problem. At least from my experience.

Mine are coming out fairly well. I don't have to do any more editing (actually a little less) than what I get with other similar tools. But as a general rule I don't try and bind multiple layers. That always has issues. But if that plugin did it, wonderful. That works better than Blender which uses the same algorithm as his plug and is pretty good. In Blender I always had to paint on things even more than Maya's new heat mapping. And layers, forget it. So who knows what magic that guy had going. Too bad he dropped it.

Unfortunately I don't have any other experiences to compare to other than XSI which is worse.

Maybe I am imagining it...but I think gloabal object scale has a big effect on how successful the heatmap skinning is.

I had vastly different results depending on the scale of the character.
I had one huge character, over 100 default Maya units long and the heatmap worked better than the default skinning after tweaking the falloff settings a bit. But then I had awful results using the same settings on a much smaller charater which was around 10 default Maya units long. I tried tweaking the settings to get similar results...but gave up after a while...since I LOVE painting skin weights!

Yeah, that is what I was saying, my larger/realworld scale skinning was good. But then when I had to go super small...still real world...but small...it didn't have anywhere near the same results. I donno though, maybe I had some other setting out of whack.

We are in real world scale. cm default with characters as normal height. pm_heatweight never had this problem.
I'd just like to know what Maya got wrong on its implementation of it. For some reason, I knew this would be an issue.

All I can say is that the guy that wrote that plug definitely had something going on. Because it is not normal at all. I have never seen a tool be as good as that, and through layers as well. Maybe you can try and contact him to pick his brain on exactly how he did that. Maybe if the code is available someone can pick it up from where he left off and bring it up to speed with 2013 and beyond. Sounds like it was a great tool.

Interesting yeah. I did catch that that was what it was based on. As I mentioned above. I don't have more to add other than contact him and see what other voodoo he had going, because I have used it, and Blender ain't all that. It will fail with layers guaranteed.

Hey djx,.. Thanks, as you are the one who suggested pm_heatweight years ago on a forum.... which I found quite useful for a long time,.. much appreciated.
So we are still in Maya2012sap at work and we are migrating to 2013.5
I'm not seeing the same results for some reason as the stand alone version. And I'm just using ab_autorig from supercrumbly.com

Follow Us On:

The CGSociety

The CGSociety is the most respected and accessible global organization for creative digital artists. The CGS supports artists at every level by offering a range of services to connect, inform, educate and promote digital artists worldwide. More about us on TheArtSociety.com